Facebook enables Baltimore Highlands resident to connect with former scouts

Brian Conlin, bconlin@patuxent.com

Kitty Mathias wore her Girl Scout leader hat as she dined Tuesday afternoon with some members of the Girl Scout troop she led more than 40 years ago.

A Baltimore Highlands resident for the past four decades, the former Pigtown resident joked that she would have worn her entire Scout uniform to the gathering at the Olive Grove Restaurant in Linthicum, but it likely wouldn't fit.

Mathias said she acted as a Scout leader for about 10 years as the girls, most of whom lived in the Pigtown area of southwest Baltimore and progressed from Brownies through Girl Scouts, enjoyed catching up with the crew.

"The faces haven't changed, it's still the same as when they were 7 years old," said Mathias, 81. "To me, they're still my little Brownies."

"I feel like I'm right back where I was," said Anna Day Turfle, of Glen Burnie. "The feeling doesn't go away."

For the most part, any contact Mathias had with her former Girl Scout members came through Facebook, she said.

In addition to the reunion among Girl Scouts, the lunch also brought together former classmates of Western High School, in Baltimore, the oldest all-girl public high school in the United States.

Sharon Holter, the daughter of Mathias, was among those who belonged to both groups.

She said she encouraged other members of the Girl Scout troop and Western High graduates, many of whom are from the 21227 ZIP code, to reach out via Facebook so they can expand their reunions, which they hope to make regular events.

The women, who had largely lost track of each other after they left the school, which was at the intersection of Howard and West Centre streets in 1967, used Facebook to reconnect and organize the lunch.

"Without Facebook, we never would have found each other," said Jane (Entwistle) Shipley, a Charles Village resident who was among the nine women at the gathering. "Not one of us is operating with the same last name we had. How (do) we find each other?"

Women who list their maiden names on their Facebook accounts make it easier reconnect, Shipley noted.

That connection is something that, for all of the benefits of Facebook, only a face-to-face meeting can evoke.

"As I saw each face, I remembered something ridiculous that they did as a child," Mathias said.

Mathias declined to elaborate, and stated that they were good kids.

As the women chatted and recounted tales, they would break into a laughter that, Mathias said, hadn't changed a bit from when they were younger.

"I just look at them and think, 'What beautiful people,'" Mathias said.